12 yr olds friends parents messaging my child

[Upschittscreek1]

Hi, just putting this out there to see if this is normal or not? My 12 year old has a friend whom they spend some time with at their friends house quite a lot. This friends parent texts my child, is this weird? I don't like the idea of a grown adult messaging a child who isn't theirs? Is this normal? I wouldn't dream of messaging one of my children's friends even if I knew them well? my child is on the spectrum and so quite young for their age, I am also neurodivergent so not sure if I am overreacting? People's views would be good

This is a good approach

One day after school my DS (13) and a few of his friends went to a local spot to play basketball after which, when attempting to contact me to organise an uber, he realised his phone was off and he used his friend’s phone to let me know (he has my number in his school diary).
DS gets an uber home from school (or from the local games spot) so I had to text his friend to let DS know when the uber was arriving.
Unless something similar to the above happened I’d never dream of having any type of conversation with any of DS friends.
Have you reached out to the parents yet

Actually now you have explained this i can relate. My just teen lacks confidence and will never invite any friends to anything tho will use phone for other things. Its a confidence issue. So asks me to invite x or just doesnt do any invites. So it falls to me. Other parents may find that strange but its just how it is for us. Even if another child messages them with an invite they will give a very short reply at max then ask me to contact the other parent (or sometimes child) to explain. So it could be a neurodivergent things

Yes it’s weird I would tell the parents to stop it and go through you

You should be messaging the other child's parent.

That's quite clearly the right way to behave..

Being ND doesn't justify messaging minors

Not normal. We have a 16 year old babysitter and I cleared it with her mother whether I could text her directly for babysitting requests. If my husband wants to organise a night out, he texts her mother to ask whether she can babysit as he doesn't want to cross boundaries or make the parents worried. We don't text with anything else (other than the very rare text to say good luck with exams how our kids are looking forward to seeing her when she's finished), and she's much older than your child.

I wonder whether the parents are pushing and driving the friendship? You mentioned that your child is nuerodivergent, is this 'friend' also ASD or has other social difficulties and the parents are wanting to encourage the interactions? Perhaps they worry about their child and that they are left out of wider arrangements. However, your child is 12 and these adults should not on a regular basis be messaging your child. In fact Id go as far as to say a 12 year old other than a brick phone should not have a smart phone. I think you should get these messages forwarded to uour own phone and send the parents a personal message politely asking them not to send messages to your child but consult with you. Point out that you monitor your child's phone he/she is 12 and you have an understanding that you have access to all messaging. That should stop the issue. Are you sure that the visits to this child's home are also safe? You havent said what the messages say. But you are right to be concerned its a little odd.

I will often message teen’s friends when I can’t appear to get hold of one of my kids. But nothing more than something like “is Jack with you?”

But DS does have one friend with a mum who always messages DS to make arrangement between DS and her son. She is from a different country/culture though so I just put it down to that. That said, her messages are always direct, to the point and mainly logistical. None of this I care about you stuff.

I sometimes message my DDs friend to tell DD to look at her phone. I don't think that's weird?

I think that is ULTRA weird.....

Why is it weird? If you need to get a message to your child and they are not bloody reading the text or answering their phones then messaging the person that they are with seems sensible?

This happened with a friend’s DC. The child of the mother messaging was quite an awkward, shy child and the mother was trying to create and manipulate friendships for them. For example, the mother would message my friend’s DC to ask if they were going to Scouts, DC would reply they were but if the didn’t the mother would then message and berate the DC for leaving her child alone and say they hadn’t had a good time.

I agree. My children have ASD. One in particular lacked confidence to the extent that I was still arranging get togethers with her friends until she was about 17. But always through their mother. They finally worked out that she wasn't going to contact them, so now they initiate contact and organise directly with her.

You should probably get a grip
then. Also, read my response to the other person who said that.

I've done this too 😂

The other child’s mum is overstepping and doesn’t respect your boundaries. I wouldn’t be comfortable too. She is managing the friendship by texting your child. I’ve seen parents like that.

That's awful - I'd have had the number blocked.
Emotionally blackmailing a child?! 😡

Unless I know what they are texting, I can't judge.

Thst is not an.overreaction on your part. An.adult texting "I care about you" to someone else's 12-y-o is crossing a boundary and on its way to grooming. This adult is inserting themself into their child's friendship with another child.

The friend's mum texted "I care about you".

This is so weird. I know you say you don’t like confrontation, well tough, you need to firmly put a stop to this for your child’s sake. The parent sounds malevolent.

Totally agree with all of this, especially the risk of accidentally sending something.

Sorry you had to deal with that wanker, how awful. ‘Precious spawn’ did make me laugh though!

My kid are neurodivergent and when they were little I would sometimes ask groups of kid in the park if my kid could join in because they were too anxious to ask or just join but once they got involved they had a whale of a time.
I thought maybe the mum is advocating for her kid to arrange the get together perhaps her kid wants to but is too shy to get the ball rolling but ‘I care about you’ sounds pretty groomy in my eyes.
id never Send that , perhaps if a child has told me / my child thy feel unsafe I might get involved but more in terms of letting the right people know such as school for example, not texting a kid directly.

I think what frustrates me with parents who do this is they are usually the ones being all high and mighty about not letting their children have phones but then they try and break all sensible boundaries that any decent parent would have around phone use.

I don't let my children have any adult contact details in their phone unless they are immediate family members and grandparents . Key rules around phone use is that it is only for contacting family and close friends and no one else.

I find it deeply unsettling that some adults can't grasp what a violation it is to have or ask for an unrelated child's phone number

Whatever the parent is texting, it's inappropriate. The direct contact by messaging is inappropriate. Why does her child not text? It's a power and maturity imbalance and therefore improper. The parent is a control freak with boundary issues.

And the mere fact that she is actually texting this child tell me all I need to know about her. Lunatic.